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Houston Community College

listed as hccs.edu · Claimed by Shinyhunters · listed 6 hours ago

Today
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedJun 15, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Shinyhunters
Status
Data leaked
Country
United States
Sector
Education
Listed on leak site
Jun 15, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Houston Community College (HCC) is a multi-campus community college system serving the Houston area with 19 campuses. It offers over 85 programs including university transfer degrees, workforce training, apprenticeships, adult education, and high school completion programs. The institution serves tens of thousands of students annually with flexible learning options including online, hybrid, and in-person classes.

Industry
Higher Education - Community College
Address
Multiple campuses across Houston, Texas (19 locations)

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration at massive scale of highly sensitive regulated data: 344,000+ international student documents including passports and immigration records; 12,000+ financial aid records with PII (names, SSN-related FAFSA data, birthdates); 14,000+ health/immunization records; and hundreds of thousands of student PII records. This includes multiple categories of regulated data (SEVIS immigration records, FERPA-protected education records, health information) affecting a large institution.

ShinyHunters claims to have exfiltrated comprehensive student records and institutional data across all HCC campuses. The group states they obtained hundreds of thousands of student records, over 344,000 international student documents including SEVIS forms and visa materials, financial aid records, health/immunization data, and library credentials. A final ransom deadline of 18 June 2026 was issued with threat of public leak.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Student personal records (name, address, phone, email, DOB, gender, ethnicity)
  • Academic data (enrollment status, GPA, major, student ID, class rosters, grades)
  • International student documents (SEVIS I-20 forms, visa applications, passports, bank statements, tax returns, immigration affidavits)
  • Financial aid records (FAFSA/ISIR data, bursar reports with 12,000+ records)
  • Health/immunization records (14,000+ vaccination records, meningitis compliance documentation, 15,000+ additional health documents)
  • Library credentials and PINs
  • Student email accounts (@student.hccs.edu)

What the group claims

Hundreds of thousands of student records containing full name, home address, phone, email, date of birth, gender, ethnicity, enrollment status, GPA, major, and student ID across all campuses. Daily and full student roster exports library credentials, PINs, and @student[.hccs[.edu accounts. Over 12,000 financial aid and bursar reports including FAFSA/ISIR suspense data with names, birthdates, emails, phones, and home addresses. Class rosters with birthdates, grades, academic programs, and contact information for tens of thousands of enrolled students per term. Over 344,000 international student documents including SEVIS I-20 forms, visa applications, passports, bank statements, tax returns, immigration affidavits, and acceptance letters. Over 14,000 student immunization and vaccination records including meningitis compliance documentation. Over 15,000 additional health and immunization documents across report archives and A LOT more was compromised. This is a final warning to reach out by 18 June 2026 before we leak along with several annoying (digital) problems that'll come your way. Make the right decision, don't be the next headline. | Updated: 16 June 2026 | Warning: FINAL WARNING PAY OR LEAK

Sources

Source

Indexed 6 hours ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About shinyhunters

Based on the limited publicly available information, shinyhunters appears to be a recently emerged ransomware group first observed in October 2025, primarily motivated by financial gain through extortion activities targeting organizations across multiple sectors. The group's origin and potential affiliations remain unclear due to their recent emergence, and there is insufficient public documentation to determine whether they operate as a Ransomware-as-a-Service model or as an independent entity. Their attack methodology and specific technical capabilities have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence firms, though their targeting pattern suggests a broad opportunistic approach rather than sector-specific specialization. The group has reportedly victimized approximately 77 organizations, with primary targeting focused on the United States, France, Japan, Germany, and Australia, showing particular interest in consumer services, technology, financial services, transportation and logistics, and education sectors. Given the group's very recent emergence in late 2025, there are no widely reported major campaigns or high-profile incidents documented by established security research organizations, and no known law enforcement actions have been publicly reported against this group. The current operational status of shinyhunters remains active based on available reporting, though comprehensive threat intelligence profiles from major security firms like Mandiant, CrowdStrike, or government agencies have not yet been published due to the group's recent appearance in the threat landscape. The group has been linked to 127 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on October 3, 2025; most recent post June 15, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • June 15, 2026hccs.edu listed by shinyhunterson the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by shinyhunters

shinyhunters has been linked to 127 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full shinyhunters dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Education sector, which has 1,082 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, hccs.edu is reported in United States, a country with 3,101 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by shinyhunters means hccs.edu appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

  • Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
  • Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
  • Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
  • Report the incident to your national CERT, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on shinyhunters's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.